This post is in English, since as opposed to most of the posts in this blog, this is about something global.
Since the last attacks in Mumbai, I’ve been thinking on what can be done to deal with this (almost impossible to understand for our rational minds) phenomenon of terrorism. As opposed to previous attacks, where I felt personally «involved» (attacks in Israel, or Amia in Argentina), this time I think I can have a more distant look at the problem, which usually helps when analyzing.
Is obvious that it is impossible to prevent all the terrorist attacks (I dont want to even imagine what percentage of attacks are being prevented at one stage or other, if half of these prevented attacks would succeed our life would be a completely chaos). Some may argue that we could focus in the sources of fanatism, and I guess we should, but doesnt look simple, and is a very looooooooooonnnnngggggg term solution.
So I was thinking that the way to deal with it is by finding a way to make this attacks have an effect exactly opposed to what the terrorists plan, so this will obvioulsy des-motivate the attackers.
What do I mean?
Lets take the case of Mumbai, what is the effect the terrorist want to cause with this attacks?
Is hard to enter these criminal minds, but it seems that one of the motivations is to stop the normal cause of living, create panic so people stop with their normal activities, turists stop coming to visit, business people stop coming for meetings, etc. Basically, disrupt normal life, stop economic development, etc
What if we had the means to inmediately restore normal life, and even provide economic growth to attacked cities? in this case, the whole motivation of the terrorists would dissapear……
Imagine if next week we would have in Mumbai a huge business conference, a great rock concert, and a big cricket international tournament? Plenty of tourists, international business people and stars?
Basically we need an non-profit organization with enough funds (still nothing compared with how much is terrorism costing to the world economy), ready to deploy such activities in zero time (inmediacy is critical here), acting as a «contracyclical reaction to terrorist attacks».
Hard to know if this would success but may be worth a try.
I’ve done my part….. the good thing of being a blogger is that you dont need to keep asking whether is a good idea or not, just post it, and if it is good enough it may reach the appropriate person and, who knows, it may happen one day…….
)
Pablo Brenner & Sergio Fogel Blog 